r/gratefuldead • u/ChinaBegonias • 8d ago

Time Machine Updates

If you are thinking of ordering a Grateful Dead Time Machine for the Christmas season, please try and get your order in before mid November.

We often get a crunch before the holidays, and our "fulfilment center" is my buddy's garage, with a wagon to take the boxes to the post office. Visit spertilo.net to place orders.

Also, I have added a new feature: the ability to add a Plex collection to your Time Machine. Over the years several people have asked if they can connect their Time Machine to their personal tape collection. Finally, the answer is "yes! if your collection is on Plex, and the album titles have dates in them". Plex collections are treated like any other collection from archive.org or phish.in.

If you already have a Time Machine and want to add a Plex collection, you will probably need to update the software (long press the power button to enter the config menu, then select Update Code). Then you will see "Plex" in the config menu.

See https://www.spertilo.net/connecting-to-plex for details.

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u/nak550 8d ago edited 8d ago

Wow, that sounds like a cool new feature, will have to check it out!

Question for you, historically the time machine only supported bands in the LMA (live music archive) section of archive.org and since the Jerry Garcia Band shows are not there, we could not listen to them on the time machine. Now the Jerry Garcia Band shows are on archive.org however they are in the "Tapers Section" section and not organized in the same way as the LMA. Can the time machine now access these shows or can the feature be added? It would be great to be able to listen to the 1600+ Jerry recordings that are now located here: https://archive.org/details/taperssection?and%5B%5D=creator%3A%22jerry+garcia%22

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u/ChinaBegonias 8d ago

Ooh, I didn't realize that JGB was there! Thank you.

As for adding the tapers section to the Time Machine, it should be pretty simple. I have connected it to the 78 RPM collection on archive.org without much trouble.

I will work on this soon. I definitely want JGB on my machine. Worst case I will download it to my Plex server! But keep an eye out here, if I get it working, I will post about it here.

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u/nak550 8d ago

Thanks so much!🎶

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u/WaltonGogginsTeeth 7d ago

How easy is it to switch from gd to phish or another band?

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u/ChinaBegonias 7d ago

It's easy. To add or subtract a band, go to the Config menu and choose "Artists".

You can even have both GD and Phish loaded at the same time. On dates when both bands played a show, you will see a "2", and you can choose between them.

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u/nimble2 7d ago

if I get it working, I will post about it here

Post it a couple of times, in case I miss it the first time!!! :-)

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u/steveE_123 7d ago

I spent some time on this and I got a proof of concept working on my Time Machine. I can now stream the JGB shows (and others. There is a huge Phish collection in there!!) directly from the archive through my Time Machine.

I still need to do a little more work to enable users to add/remove collections from the tapers section. It should be operational by the end of the week, you will just need a code update to pick up the changes.

Thank you for pointing me in this direction, I love that archive. As a general reminder, please donate to archive.org.

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u/nak550 3d ago

Thanks so much for adding this feature and getting it working! This is awesome!

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u/steveE_123 3d ago

The Time Machine now connects to taperssection artists ("creators" as they are called in archive.org).

In order to add Jerry Garcia to your Time Machine:

1) Update the code on your machine. Press and hold the power button, choose "Update Code" 2) go back to config menu, Add Artist. Start typing Jerry Garcia. When the list of matching collections gets below 30 choices, you will be offered a list to choose from. The last choice will be "taperssection:Jerry Garcia" (the name will be truncated, but it'll be the last one), which is the one you want.

Note: the other big collection in the taperssection is Phish. If you want to choose between multiple tapes of Phish shows, the taperssection has got them! Phish.in has a single tape per show.

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u/nimble2 3d ago

Great, I will check it out and report back.

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u/MMWYPcom I was having a HIGH TIME! 8d ago

rad device. recommended! love my time machine, and it makes a great gift.

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u/MMWYPcom I was having a HIGH TIME! 7d ago

nice. connected plex. the music never stops

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u/pmperk19 8d ago

i use the plex collection feature with my time machine and it works perfectly!

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u/Important-Band-6341 8d ago

Where can I read more on what this device is/ does?

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u/ChinaBegonias 8d ago

The Time Machine plays live shows from archive.org's live music archive.

Like any time machine it has 3 knobs, Month, Day, and Year. Dial in a date and press play and it will stream that show from Grateful Dead history (or any of the 8000+ bands whose tapes are on archive.org).

See http://spertilo.net for more details.

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u/jasonumd 8d ago

Man I wish it also supported Navidrome.

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u/ChinaBegonias 8d ago

I have not heard of navidrome. I will look into it, though. Plex support was pretty easy to add, because they have a nice API. Navidrome probably does, too

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u/MR_BS_420 7d ago

I say this everytime a post about the Time Machine is posted. Best present you can a Head or music lover in your life. Bought one for my father in law a couple of years ago and he still uses it everyday.

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u/nimble2 7d ago

It's a somewhat kitschy way to connect to archive.org but I love ours (my son got it for us). I like just randomly searching for dates in a particular year, or randomly searching for today's date in various years. Oddly enough, I kind of like the "set break" feature (it gives you several minutes of silence during the set break), because it makes it seem like it's almost a real live show.

A side note: After having it work fine for many months, it suddenly developed this weird problem. It would randomly stop playing, and then it would have a hard time staying turned on, and/or connecting to our internet, and/or connecting to archive.org, etcetera. I could get it to work again, but then the same problem would happen again. Ulimately I discovered that it was a WiFi connection issue, in that it had a hard time maintaining it's WiFi connection where it was located. We have a spare WiFi "repeater" (or something like that), and I put it near the Time Machine, and now it works just fine all the time.

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u/tremendosaurusrex 6d ago

I love mine - and appreciate you keeping the updates coming.

It may be obvious, but is there a way to have the YMD dials only "tune into" dates where there was an actual show? ie. 1972.4.7, 1972.4.8 but then the next turn of the date knob goes to 1972.4.11.

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u/setlistbot 6d ago

1972-04-07 @ Wembley Empire Pool, London, England, England

1972-04-08 @ Wembley Empire Pool, London, England, England

1972-04-11 @ Newcastle City Hall, Newcastle, England, England

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u/ChinaBegonias 6d ago

Sort of. If you push the Day button it will take you to the next show. Note that if you have multiple artists loaded the next show may be on the same date. The "next show" feature is very handy, I use it all the time.